alien to them, and the
pre-Kantian period of modern times had almost wholly ignored--an entrance
into philosophy, and of transforming and enriching the modern view of the
world from this standpoint. Kant's position is as opposite and superior to
the specifically modern, to the naturalistic temper of the new period, as
Plato stands out, a stranger and a prophet of the future, above the level
of Greek modes of thought. More fortunate, however, than Plato, he found
disciples who followed further in the direction pointed out by that face of
the Janus-head of his philosophy which looked toward the future: the
ethelism of Fichte and the historicism of Hegel have their roots in Kant's
doctrine of the practical reason. These are acquisitions which must never
be given up, which must ever be reconquered in face of attack from forces
hostile to spirit and to morals. In life, as in science, we must ever anew
"win" ethical idealism "in order to possess it." As yet the reconciliation
of the historical and the scientific, the Christian and the modern spirit
is not effected. For the inbred naturalism of the modern period has not
only asserted itself, amalgamated with Kantian elements, in the realistic
metaphysics and mechanical psychology of Herbart and in the system of
Schopenhauer, as a lateral current by the side of Fichte, Schelling, and
Hegel, but, under the influence of the new and powerful development of the
natural sciences, has once more confidently risen against the traditions of
the idealistic school, although now it is tempered by criticism and
concedes to the practical ideals at least a refuge in faith. The conviction
that the rule of neo-Kantianism is provisional does not rest merely on the
mutability of human affairs. The widespread active study of the philosophy
of the great Koenigsberger gives ground for the hope that also those
elements in it from which the systems of the idealists have proceeded as
necessary consequences will again find attention and appreciation. The
perception of the fact that the naturalistico-mechanical view represents
only a part, a subordinate part, of the truth will lead to the further
truth, that the lower can only be explained by the higher. We shall also
learn more and more to distinguish between the permanent import of the
position of fundamental idealism and the particular form which the
constructive thinkers have given it; the latter may fall before legitimate
assaults, but the former will